Sharing You

“And what makes you so sure I don’t want you to let me go?”

I smiled at her defiance and brought my other hand up to wipe tears from her cheek before cupping it. Her eyes shut and a heavy breath left her at my touch. That’s why I’m sure. “Because right now you’re guarding yourself so I can’t hurt you again. And I don’t blame you for it. I know I don’t deserve you after everything I’ve put you through. But no one will ever love you as fiercely as I do. If you believe anything, Kamryn, please believe that.”

Her head shook back and forth. “I don’t . . . I can’t. I can’t do this with you. Brody, I love you, but . . . I just can’t.” Forcefully removing my hands from her face, she moved for the door again. I trapped her against the wall.

“Please just hear me out.” If she was going to leave now, she needed to know everything. “I filed for divorce three days ago. I told Liv this morning and said she needed to be out of the house by this weekend. I was wrong to do what I’ve done with you.” A harsh breath left her, and I spoke quickly. “I will never regret being with you, but I hate that I made you wait for me. You didn’t deserve that, you deserved all of me from the begi

“You thought I’d cheated on you,” she said through her tears.

“No. No, I was being selfish, and jealous, and let my thoughts get away from me before asking you. But, Kamryn, I knew deep down that you wouldn’t cheat on me. I was just already stressing about telling you what happened with Liv the night before. I was afraid of losing you, and when I heard he’d been at your place . . . I snapped.”

Her eyes had hardened when she looked up at me. “And what exactly happened with you and Olivia that night?”

Letting my hand trail back up to her face, I rubbed my thumb back and forth over her cheek and looked directly into her blue eyes. “I texted you on my way home. I had decided I couldn’t wait anymore and I was going to tell her the next day. But she ended up being home, and was drunk, and when I turned her down—”

“Turned her down?”

I just raised an eyebrow at her and traced the line of her jaw when she clenched it shut. “I’ve been turning her down for years, it was nothing new. But when I turned her down, she started yelling at me. Saying I didn’t want her because she couldn’t have kids, and kept bringing Tate into it. She said I would still love her if that hadn’t happened. I told her that she knew we hadn’t loved each other before Tate ever came into the picture, and that I wanted a divorce. She flipped. Said I’d already taken everything from her, I couldn’t leave her too. She said she would kill herself if I left her, and then I’d have her death on my hands too.”

“What the fuck?” Kamryn whispered. Her expression had turned to one of complete shock.

“That’s just how she is. I kept telling her I’d tried getting her help, and I would still get her help if she would let me, but she just kept saying I would leave her so she was refusing to get help. And if I left her, she would be dead the next day. So I told her I wasn’t leaving her, because at that point I felt like I didn’t have a choice. The next day it was killing me that I didn’t know how I could leave her and I’d just told you I would, and then when I found out about Aiden . . . I just basically said, ‘Screw it.’ I knew I would do anything not to lose you, I didn’t even care if Olivia found out about us. But something happened on the drive over there, and I ended up getting more pissed off about the Aiden thing. Like I said, I let my mind get ahead of me . . . and then I fucked up everything.”

“Brody, I just don’t think I can keep doing this. You keep promising me our forever. But hasn’t enough happened that you’re starting to second-guess this ‘forever’ too? Too much happened with Olivia, and I can only imagine it’s about to get worse with you filing for divorce. Brody, what if all this is a sign? What if—what if we’re not supposed to be together?” she asked, her voice breaking. “So you filed for divorce. That means we should just go on with our relationship now? Brody, you promised me for months that you would divorce her, and you only did it after I left you.”

“No, no. Don’t start thinking about it like that. There’s so much that happened that you don’t know about. So much with Liv, her parents, and her father’s lawyer that I kept from you so you wouldn’t have the added stress. What we were already going through was stressful enough. I saw what it was doing to you—what it was doing to us. But if I had told you what was happening, Kamryn, you would have left me just so I wouldn’t have had to go through what I was going through with them. I know it. I wasn’t not leaving Olivia because I didn’t want to. Trust me, Kamryn, there was nothing I wanted more than to leave her and start my future with you.”

Her eyes had widened with dread. “What was happening?”

Shaking my head, I cupped her cheeks and leaned close. “I’ll tell you everything, just not right now. Right now I need you to know that I love you, and I need to know that I haven’t lost you.”

Kamryn’s jaw quivered, and she looked down to where our chests were pressed together.

Putting my fingers under her jaw, I lifted her face until I could look in her blue eyes and I whispered, “Please. You . . . you I can’t lose.”

A sob broke free from her chest, and she shook her head back and forth. “Brody, I love you. But if we do this, then I want all of you.”

“Done,” I vowed and pressed my lips to hers, only moving back far enough so I could speak. “Done, Kamryn. Completely, one hundred percent yours. No more calls in the middle of the night,” I swore against her lips. “No more leaving. No more hiding. I’m yours.”

“I’m done sharing you.”

I brushed a thumb against her trembling lips and looked back into her eyes. “I hate that you felt like you were. If only you knew that it’s always been only you. I was never hers; she’s never had a part of me. But God, Kamryn, I’m so damn sorry for making you wait so long.”

“Can we please have our forever?” she begged, her voice so soft and broken, I wanted to die for ever making her go through this pain and doubt in our relationship.

“Yeah, babe. We can have our forever.”

17

Kamryn

July 18, 2015

A PAIR OF arms slid around my waist, and I smiled when Brody’s lips pressed firmly against my neck.

“What are you making?”

“Breakfast.”

“Really now?” he asked as he grabbed a sausage patty from the plate and took a bite. “Is breakfast for di

I took the rest of the sausage from his fingers and spoke around it. “No, but you made me miss it the last few mornings, and I’m a breakfast-food person.”

“Are you really mad at me for making you miss breakfast?” he asked softly. The combination of his soft lips and rough stubble against my neck caused my stomach to feel like it was melting.

“Hmm?”

He laughed huskily, and I leaned against the rumbling in his chest. “I’ll take that as a no. Can I help?”

“You touching me and kissing me like that is the exact opposite of helping.”

Ru

“Uh.” I licked my lips and tried to control my breathing. “T-touching me like that.”

“So you want me to stop?”

“Hmm?” I didn’t even know where we were anymore. All I could focus on were his hands moving slowly back down my stomach and his lips on the dip between my neck and shoulder.